Business intelligence (BI) software and similar program solutions can help organizations power their various business functions for even more significant results, whether it be accounting, database management, CRM or something else. However, the software can be a considerable investment, especially if you have to buy multiple licenses for your office to use or are purchasing a very robust set of tools. Thus, it is essential that you only spend on software that will directly help your business and its immediate goals.
In this discussion, we’ll take a look at some of the ways software can help a business improve its bottom line. Hopefully, this list will help you determine the types of BI solutions that your company needs to invest in today and which ones can wait. Ultimately, the best solutions are the ones that offer a lot of features and benefits in a single toolkit.
CRM
CRM stands for customer relationship management. CRM software allows you to keep track of your CRE business, clients and deals all in one place. This helps you streamline your entire system and stay way more organized, regarding handling your contacts, various arrangements, properties and much more. Without CRM software, you’d have multiple functions of your business running separately, which would create a significant hassle and slow your business down. That’s what makes this type of software so impactful for CRE and other industries: the ability to pull from multiple platforms/systems and put all that information into one, convenient place.
Database Management
Your business creates a lot of data. Every customer/client interaction that you have produces a wealth of data about that individual, property market and your business at large. Your CRM software houses a lot of this data (and creates some data of its own), but to get the most value out of the data that you’ve collected; you need to invest in a COMP database type of software. This allows you to create reports and data dashboards that deliver real-time visibility into how your business and properties are doing. You can look at different time frames, filter results based on different types of transactions, by area, property type and much more.
Prospect Management
The key to a successful CRE brokerage is the ability to identify and follow up with prospective leads. Your software package needs to provide you with tools to curate your list of prospects. To do this, it must perform actions like segmenting lists into smaller groupings based on your target parameters. These segments can then be shared with team members, producing call lists using similar filters and tracking the progress of each prospect from the first contact to eventual sale.
Unit Stacking Visualization
In the CRE field, it is common for a broker to have some different units or spaces available in one building. This can present a challenge, especially when you have multiple tenants paying different amounts for rent and with various end dates on their leases.
The ability to see all of these units in a convenient display that logically organizes these units creates a compelling and useful visualization. You can quickly determine which groups are coming to market soon or currently vacant. Thus, you always know what’s going on with every space in your CRE portfolio.
Back Office Accounting
Accounting consumes a lot of time, no matter what business you’re in. Entering in receipts and expenses is a tedious and time-consuming hassle. Back office accounting becomes even more hectic if you have multiple different accounts or spreadsheets that are separate from one another.
A software solution to organize and handle your accounting needs is a great way to keep your receipts, expense reports, and other financial information in one place. Plus, you can perform other functions, like send invoices, calculate commissions, track which payments are still missing and more. The value of this software solution is in the time it will save you trying to handle all of this separately.
Cloud Solutions
When talking about software to power your business, you have to consider cloud-based tools and their benefits. Some businesses shy away from cloud solutions because they aren’t sure about the security or perks of leveraging cloud technology. This is unfortunate because cloud-based tools are great, especially in the CRE space where brokers are often on the move. Imagine if all of your tools, files and management software was accessible anywhere, instead of just at your office computer.
That’s the power of the cloud! And, with a sophisticated cloud solution, you can even take advantage of better storage and processing power than your office would normally be capable of.
Find What Works for Your Business
The one theme that all business intelligence software solutions have in common is convenience. The goal of these tools is to help your business become more streamlined by combining as many otherwise-separate functions and processes as possible.
Not only will this enhance your business by injecting data and sophisticated tools to target and better market to prospects, but it will also save you a lot of time (and money) that you would otherwise spend on this like back-office accounting and other operational tasks. Employees may even want to get better equipped with the new software or further their learning to benefit the company differently. This is why there are thousands of people who are PMP certified worldwide.
Again, as you look at software solutions for your business, you want to find a package that combines some different tools into one CRM solution. This gives you the complete control over your CRE business, and you don’t need to worry about learning multiple software solutions.